


Two men, an elevator and Valentine's Day

by PureBatWings



Category: Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Non-Magical, Blatant heterosexual kissing, Claustrophobia, Conversations, Grad student Credence, Graduation, M/M, Married Tina Goldstein/Newt Scamander, Professor Percival Graves, Tina and Newt adopted Credence, Trapped In Elevator, Writers, academic setting, mentions of child abuse, nonmagical AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-04-23
Updated: 2018-07-25
Packaged: 2018-10-23 00:17:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,316
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10708173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PureBatWings/pseuds/PureBatWings
Summary: Credence has an assignment to interview a professor for the university's newspaper. A power failure traps him in an elevator with the man...Usual legal disclaimers apply. Not my characters, not for money, no copyright infringement implied.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Chapter 2 for 74 76](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Chapter+2+for+74+76).



President’s Day Holiday/February 14th, present day

It was a grey foggy morning in mid-February. Perce was pleasantly surprised when he got a parking spot closer to the center of campus than usual, but didn’t think much about it. He was going to be late for his 9 a.m. meeting with a grad student who wanted to interview him about criminal psychology and his newly published books.

He had a large cup of coffee in one hand, his bag (instead of the cliched academic briefcase) slung over a shoulder since it left a hand free. It held his breakfast muffin, lunch and papers to grade and a book and his cell phone which he had carelessly thrown inside as he hustled over to campus.

Had he charged it? He couldn’t remember. The damn thing needed to be replaced, just like the tires on his Civic, the washer on the bathroom sink in his rental place and his favorite black v-neck sweater that was getting holes in the elbows.

Well, if he’d wanted Prada and other designer clothes, he should have gone into finance or maybe corporate law. He suspected he would have killed someone or himself from boredom or ended up as a profile in one of his books, “The Serial Killer Stockbroker” or some such catchy phrase.

Really, his life had gone to hell when Robert had left him a few years ago for a lover in Texas, of all the godforsaken places to have an internet romance originate. He’d taken this tenure-track position at a large mid-Atlantic state university three years ago and settled himself into the whirl of committee service, teaching, research, writing and publishing that comprised an associate professor’s existence.

Daily things like remembering to charge cell phones tended to fall to the wayside when he was hot on the trail of a new line of research, or hashing out a plot problem in his head. Maybe someday he would think about buying a house here, if he wanted to put down roots. Right now he didn’t see a reason to, one place was as good as another.

 

Credence chained his bicycle to the S-curving racks near the large Social Sciences building near the center of campus and hustled inside. It was 8:52 and he wanted to make a good impression on the man he was to interview. He had it beaten into him when he was younger that you showed up on time, you respected the time of people more important than yourself, and that he was a very low person on the totem pole of life, so he had better even be a little early.

He’d worn his nicest pants, that is to say, his least battered black cotton ones that hadn’t had something spilled on them at his part time bar tending job last weekend. It hadn’t been a full moon, so people weren’t crazy, and the tips were better than usual. There had been some giggling barely legal young women in a pack talking about the upcoming Valentine’s day party their sorority was co-hosting with a fraternity and the women kept flirting with him and buying drinks in pastel colors with umbrellas.

He had read three of the professor’s academic books on criminal psychology. They were readable enough, if a bit dry in the technical parts. Then he read Dr. Graves’ first fictional work, a thriller set in New York during the Prohibition. Credence was hooked by the style and the detail that made the gritty streets of Gotham in the 1920s come to life.

The author’s bio blurb made P. Arthur Graves look like a dictionary definition of a crime writer— he had a background as a profiler and taught at Quantico and in Washington DC as a consultant for law enforcement agencies. He did a stint as a cop before going back to school for a PhD in Criminology.  He was nationally known as an expert on the psychology of criminals.

However, it was the intense dark gaze under straight thick eyebrows that sucker-punched Credence’s libido and made him eager to see what the man was like in person.

It was odd how few people were around today, Credence thought, punching the up button for the elevator. Usually there were students milling around, a few professors hashing over the latest administration follies in the departmental budget, Instead the main hall by the bank of elevators was pretty much empty, aside from an older man, a professor, coming toward him. Oh yeah, that’s right, it was the President’s Day holiday today.

He guessed Professor Graves was an important and busy enough man that Credence should be glad he had time in his busy schedule on a holiday to meet with someone from the student newspaper. Even though the “up” button was already lit, the professor impatiently banged it and stood, bouncing on the balls of his feet, waiting and ignoring Credence after a quick assessing glance.

Credence shrugged, mentally, far better to be ignored than be the focus of attention if it meant getting insulted or hurt. He’d learned that years ago, long before Child Protective Services had removed him and his sisters from Mary Lou’s less than tender mercies, arrested her, and shunted them into foster care. Modesty and Chastity were fostered and then adopted by nice couple who didn’t want to take on the care of a brooding skittish teenage boy.

Credence had unfortunately bounced around for a while before ending up fostered and adopted by a cop, Lieutenant Tina Goldstein, and her British husband, Dr. Newton Scamander, who was a zoologist and taught at the Picquery Natural Sciences building. Their relaxed approach to parenting and a good therapist, the love of the family pets, and gentle encouragement had made Credence feel safe enough to start paying attention in school, instead of focusing on anticipating threats, hunger and violence.

His grades had improved a lot and he had gotten scholarships as an undergrad and worked part time in college as a research assistant and a waiter in Caribou Forest, the high class vegetarian restaurant downtown. Now he was earning his MFA in creative writing, getting published however he could and writing nonfiction to get published wherever he could—in the local paper, the student paper, and as a book reviewer while he worked on his stories and novel ideas. He’d had a piece in Salon about his experience in the foster care system and a Huffington Post article published about ways to help kids who were abused find and nurture their creativity. He was proudest of those two works.

The elevator bell dinged and the doors opened. Credence let the older man stride in and followed him into the elevator. He stabbed at the “7” button and half turned toward Credence.

“Which floor?”

“I’m going to 7, too.” He thought the man looked familiar, but couldn’t place him. It would come to him in a few minutes probably where he had seen him before.

The man grunted in acknowledgement and they watched the display creep up past 2,3… The elevator suddenly ground to a halt with a gear-crashing noise, the lights flickered and went out. They didn’t come back on after a few moments.

Credence couldn’t help it, he gave a little gasp. He was somewhat claustrophobic. Mary Lou had shut him in cramped dark closets until he was old enough to whip as his punishment.

“Crappy mid-century wiring,” growled his companion. “These damn elevators are always breaking down. Power failure, I guess.”

Credence took out his cell phone, it was almost out of juice. It was an older phone that needed constant charging and frequent attention like a needy lover. He shone the blue light on the keys of the elevator and pushed the alarm one. A bell rang, that made him feel better someone might find them soon.

He tried calling the campus police, but he got a busy signal twice. The third time he tried dialing home but the signal was too faint, surrounded as they were by concrete and marble and the connection cut out. With a  final sounding “fuck you” chirp, his phone went dead.

“Can your phone dial out?” he asked the other man. He heard the other man shift, put his bag and cup of coffee on the elevator’s floor and start digging. He tapped at the screen in the dark and no lights came up. “Shit, I forgot to charge it.”

They stood, waiting in silence for some minutes. There were no encouraging hums of machinery warming up and no ambient light coming through the sliding doors to indicate there was power on in the building. The older man finally sighed and slid to the floor.

“Ah, much better than standing. I’ve got a trick knee that acts up sometimes.”

Credence decided he had the right idea and plopped himself down cross legged on the floor near the man, shoving his coat under himself for padding. He didn’t want to fall if the elevator started moving again suddenly.

“What’s your name, professor?”“

Call me Perce, but I’m P. Arthur Graves to my publishers.”

“Oh! I was supposed to interview you this morning at nine. I’m Credence Goldmander.” That was why the man's face looked vaguely familiar.

“Student newspaper?”

“Yeah. I worked on it as an undergrad, so I still do pieces for them from time to time when my coursework allows.”

“Unusual surname, haven’t come across that one before.”

“I took my adoptive parents’ surnames, Goldstein and Scamander, and ran them together for my own surname.”

“Huh, that’s one way to avoid hyphenating long names, I guess. I’d shake your hand, but well, with our luck, I’d probably sock you in the eye, instead. Or worse, spill my coffee.”

The young man gave an appealing chuckle and his panic at being in the dark enclosed space receded a bit.

“No problem, sir, we’ll introduce ourselves more formally when we’ve got light to see by. If you shook my hand I'd probably want to hold on, I'm not fond of the dark or small claustrophobic spaces.”

Graves was silent for a moment, taking in the information before offering another conversation gambit: “So you’re what, a grad student in--?”

“Creative writing, but I’m writing nonfiction pieces too. I really enjoyed your novel, I devoured it last weekend when I wasn’t bartending.”

“What did you like?”

"Oh, everything, the premise that a single man like Grindelwald backed by the isolationist Senator Shaw could sow the seeds of fascism in the America like Hitler was doing in Germany. I looked up your footnote about the America First committee and Charles Lindbergh’s admiration of the Nazis. Scary stuff. And the bootlegging and other crime then, it seems like there were a lot of desperate characters during the Prohibition. I loved how your hero, Kowalski, went on a crusade and was fighting his own men to bring in the wealthy serial killer and about the closeted cop Gareth Coffin having to investigate the gay nightlife in Manhattan to help find the killer.”

There was silence. Credence rushed on, “I’m sorry, I’m sure I’m going on too much about it, but it was a gripping read. It’s one of the better thrillers I’ve read in quite a few years.”

The professor snorted in amusement. “No, no, that’s fine, it’s refreshing to hear an honest enthusiastic response as opposed to a critique couched in post-modernist terms from Foucault. Or the measured academic assessments I get on my scholarly writing.” He paused. “Do you want to wait to interview me when we’re in my office?”

“We may be here a while. It’s the President’s Day holiday, so I’m sure a lot of people are home since we don’t have classes. And if it’s a power failure…”

“We’re shit outta luck,” concluded the other succinctly.

“Yeah, I think so. We could be here a while, so could we just keep talking?”

“Right,” said Graves, stretching out his legs and taking a sip of his coffee. “You want some coffee? It’s a big cup, still hot, you can drink out of the other side.”

“I would, thanks,” said Credence and felt around with his hand in the dark until he encountered Graves’ well-muscled leg. Graves reached down and pushed the paper cup into his hand.

“Here, warm up your hands, they’re cold.”

“I biked here,” explained Credence. “Saving up for a car while I live at home.”

“That’ll keep you in shape, given the hills around campus.”

“What do you do for exercise?”

“Run, swim, sometimes lift weights. I don’t like to play on teams for exercise.”

“It can be loud with other people around, makes it hard to focus sometimes,” said Credence, relishing the warmth of the coffee as he took another swallow.

“Precisely. I like swimming laps when I'm feeling antisocial, it's hard for someone to jabber at you when you're underwater.”

“Here, I’m done,” said Credence, regretfully surrendering the warmth, and tapped the other man’s leg with the coffee cup. "Thank you.”

“No problem. So what were you going to ask me for the interview?” asked Graves as he took a sip from the cup.

“I guess I wanted to hear about how you got interested in criminology first…” said Credence. If they kept talking, he could ignore the press of darkness in on him. He closed his eyes to listen to the nuances of the other man’s voice, its rich timbre rolling through him like aural honey.

“My dad was a cop, so there was always discussion in our house about crime, protecting innocent people, doing a public service. My mom was a teacher so she saw what happened to kids who were in bad home situations too. I was a senior majoring in criminology when a girl I’d gone to middle school with disappeared, poof, like some evil magician grabbed her.”

“She was seen at a bar after attending a concert at the stadium and she said she was walking home after she was separated from her friends. This was before cell phones, so she couldn’t call her friends to come get her. She’s still a cold case, these twenty-five years later. I thought, if we knew more about what makes kidnappers or serial killers tick, maybe that could help solve these crimes or even help prevent them. That was why I decided to focus on the psychology of criminals, to try and tease out the commonalities they have beside the three famous ones of bedwetting, harming animals or setting fires that youngsters display before they graduate to more serious crimes.”

“I see that in your novel, how Kowalski’s trying to get in the mind of the killer, even if he’s only read Freud and William James and Poe to try to understand how such people’s minds work.”

“Yes, I found that a challenge not to get too many anachronisms in there, not to have characters in the 1920s sound too modern, but still tell a good tale that modern readers would understand and enjoy.”

“So you were a cop for a while and then decided to go back to school?”

“A few years working on the force made me realize I needed different tools, more education. My union helped pay for some courses and then I decided to go all in and go for a doctorate as a full time student. Why did you decide to pursue a graduate degree?”

“I want to learn about my craft from other writers and to incorporate what they can teach me into my own writing. I think I have my own voice, but there are so many amazing authors out there that I admire. Why the 1920s for your novel’s setting?”

“Oh, lots of reasons, a lot of crime happened solely because of the Prohibition, there was a lot of division and restlessness in that period, violent strikes, unemployed war veterans with shell-shock, a whole host of different events happening that made it similar to our own time.”

“Gareth Coffin was my favorite character, is he one of yours?”

Graves took in a quick breath and let it out. If this young man could admit to being afraid of the dark, he could share a confidence in return. “Coffin I modeled on a couple of gay cops I knew, including myself. He’s one of these characters that straddles boundaries—he wants to be a good cop, but if he goes to gay bars to find a lover, if he dances with another man in a bar, he’s breaking the law at that time. So-- he’s conflicted about being a lawman, but also a lawbreaker. He loves being a cop, the fraternity of it, but he’s also wanting the love of a good man of his very own. Which of course gets him embroiled with a rum-running gangster to advance the plot for my own nefarious author's reasons.”

Credence chuckled. “It’s fun to build worlds and put people in them, isn’t it? I could identify with him trying to suss out a new world when he discovers the gay bars and Harlem speakeasies. I figured out only a few years ago I was queer, but it’s mostly men who do it for me. My girlfriend from college, Zoe, and I are still really good friends.”

“It’s important to have people who care about you. My friend Sera is about the only one I can call in a crisis—she’s a chief of staff for a senator so it's always some political shenanigans with her-- we had a fling in high school.”

“I’m lucky now in my life, it helps make up for how unlucky I was a little kid. Tina rescued me and my adopted sisters from an abusive home. It was bad enough it made the evening news,” he added. He couldn’t help it, his voice wavered a bit, remembering how awful things had been.

There was a reflective silence in the darkness. Graves’ hand touched Credence’s side, then found his arm and slid down to his hand and took it in a warm grasp. “I’m sorry your childhood sucked,” he said sympathetically. “And I’m glad things are better for you now. If hearing about my boring life makes you feel better despite being trapped in an elevator, you go right ahead, we'll keep talking.”

“ Thanks...I’m sorry you don’t seem to have a lot of people who care about you, do you?” Credence asked, squeezing his hand back and not letting go. It felt good to know he wasn’t alone in the dark.

“Rob left me a few years back, I haven’t been able to find someone else I’ve liked as well, someone who, well, is more than one night stand material.”

Embarrassed at spilling his personal life to a stranger, he went to withdraw his hand, but Credence held on. “Can you not let go? Mary Lou, the woman who abused us, used to punish me by leaving me in dark closets when I was little, and telling me the devil would come get me and then the rats would pick at my bones.”

“Bitch. I know a number of ways to dispose of a body without it being found... purely for academic reasons, you understand,” he added quickly.

“She’s dead, her bible-thumping pissed off another prisoner and a homemade shiv between her ribs killed her before they could get her to a hospital,” Credence informed him, almost happily.

There was another long silence as they cast about for topics of conversation that were less morbid. ‘What do you like to do for fun?” asked Perce, giving Credence’s hand a reassuring squeeze. Credence shifted a little closer, and greatly daring, shifted so the other man’s arm draped over his shoulders. He waited to hear him object to their physical closeness and when there were no complaints, he answered the question.

“I like reading, of course, and writing. I take long walks around town and people watch. I eavesdrop on the conversations that college students have with their friends and compare their concerns with mine and think about how different people are, work on plot ideas in my head.”

“That’s fun?” he asked, his breath fluffing Credence’s wavy dark hair.

“Well, sometimes. It’s interesting, at least. I like talking with you. I think I’d like drives in the country or sightseeing if I had a car and the time and money to travel.”

“I think your mind is pretty interesting too. It’s not like what I’ve encountered in other graduate students before. Maybe the criminology students are just a different species than you creative writing types?”

Credence laughed. “That can be your next book, a guide to student types, and a forensic analysis of their mating and living habits.”

“Ugh, I remember living with five other guys in a suite. You needed an IED to clean out the place after a kegger party.”

Credence’s prediction that they might be caught in the elevator for a while unfortunately proved true. They shared their lunches—Credence’s sandwich and Perce’s salad, eaten without dressing and with fingers and the two water bottles Credence had stashed in his backpack. Perce's muffin intended for breakfast ended up being dessert.

As the winter afternoon wore on, it got chilly in the elevator. Credence and Perce lay spooned together, wrapped in their coats. Perce nuzzled the fine hair at the back of Credence’s neck with his lips while Credence dozed. Around 4 p.m. there was a grinding noise, lights that flickered back on and the voices of maintenance workers who called, “Anyone in there?”

They yelled back and the next two hours were a process of waiting, then waiting some more for the elevator doors to be opened, then getting out and, for them both, the relief of empty bladders after hastily heading for a restroom. Perce waited by the sinks as Credence thoroughly washed his hands.

“You wanna share another coffee with me tomorrow?” he asked, not wanting to let the young man out of his sight.

The grad student straightened up, and turned to face him with a grin, extending his long fingered hand, "Credence Goldmander, I'm pleased to meet you, Perce Graves. Would you like to share supper with me tonight?"

Damn but he was lovely, and his dimples were simply adorable, thought Perce. He knew what his hair smelled like and how good he felt wrapped in his arms. Credence was smart and tough and sensitive and funny, and interesting and into men.

“Of course I do. I still have things I want to talk with you about.”

Those eyes, so compelling in the author’s photo were a thousand times more sexy in person, decided Credence. He wanted to see more of that expression of want on Perce's face when he looked at him. "You want to do something more than just talk, maybe, eventually?"

“Hell yes,” said Perce fervently. They walked out into the grey twilight, unhooked Credence’s bike from the rack and stowed it in the back of Perce’s car. On their way downtown to eat, Credence’s phone charged off the car battery and he left a message at home that he wouldn’t be in until late, maybe tomorrow morning. “I think I’ve met someone special, I’ll tell you about him later.” They spent their meal and hours afterwards talking. Perce was able to spoon with him again that night, in a comfortable bed, after they'd spent time kissing and cuddling, taking it slow for now, before they fell asleep, both wearing Perce's sweatpants and Credence in a "Property of the FBI" t-shirt he'd borrowed from Graves.

They started dating and kept talking. Credence knew he could learn so much from Perce, and Perce delighted in Credence’s unique take on things, how he made him reconsider things he’d not bothered to explore, if ever.

Years later, only briefly interrupted by Perce’s consulting gigs and speeches at conferences and Credence’s author tours for his bestselling books, their love affair and conversations were still going on...


	2. Commencement

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> One and a half years later... For 74 76 who wanted a few more snippets of Gradence in this AUniverse.

“Sit still, Tina!” two men hissed at her from either side. She twisted in her seat and tried to look over her shoulder to see the graduates lined up for the procession. “Spoilsports, both of you,” she muttered and slumped back in her seat.

“You’d only be able to see the people with the A surnames, anyway,” pointed out her husband soothingly, taking her hand. “You wouldn’t want him still to be a Barebone, would you?”

“That bitch,” muttered Tina, in stereo with Credence’s lover, who sat on her other side. “May she rot and poison giant hogweed,” added Newt, who was a biologist.

“I agree,” said Percy over Tina’s head. “Besides, Goldmander is a much nicer sounding surname.”

Fortunately for Tina the ceremony was divided into two sections with the students getting their master’s degrees in the arts going before those in the sciences. When Credence Goldmander, MFA in Creative Writing, _summa cum laude,_ was announced, Tina stood up and blew an approving piercing whistle between her fingers before being yanked down into her seat.

“Do you want me to get tenure next semester, or not?” asked Newt, rather reasonably. “I don’t think my department chair would approve of my wife making a spectacle of herself. Rather subverts the whole Pomp and Circumstance notion.  He’s fonder of dignified ceremonies than a canon at Westminster Abbey.”

“Only because I love you, darling, will I cease and desist,” she agreed demurely and then proceeded to kiss him deeply, embarrassing him further. She enjoyed rattling his inbred British sense of reserve.

“Straight people,” murmured Perce, “why must they be so… blatant?” The two to his left snuggled together as Anissa Howard, _cum laude_ in Modern Dance, received her degree. They studiously ignored him. He was well matched with their adopted son Credence in the fine art of snarky commentary.

 


End file.
